Abstract

Tuvalu, an archipelagic nation state in central Oceania, is being transformedby climate change, particularly sea level rise. Its islands are also beingrepresented in new ways in climate change discourses such as journalism andenvironmentalist campaigns. This research in the interdisciplinary field ofisland studies also draws from insights in cultural geography andanthropology to examine representations ofthe Tuvalu islands in climatechange discourses. The central idea underpinning the work's analyticalframework is the islograph, taken to be coherent suites of islandrepresentations and their constitutive roles in relations of power. In asignificant discursive moment in which climate change is being understood asthe global environmental crisis, Tuvalu is taking on new meanings thatdemand documentation and critical analysis. Such meanings are tied to anextant and remarkably strong presence of islands in Western discourses.Analysis of Tuvalu's islographs - many of which are produced by Westernersengaged in climate change discourses - considers whether and how its islandsare paradoxical spaces and mechanisms of relational identity construction thatfunction as mirrors of the self and a means of identity construction in relationto distant and different others. Islographs of Tuvalu that are analysed in detailin this work include the following: Mark Lynas' popular science monographHigh Tide, which aims to redefine Tuvalu as a frontier of climate change anda spur to action on climate change at the global level; various activities ofenvironmentalist non-government organisation Alofa Tuvalu which try toreposition Tuvalu as the rightful space in which global lessons for sustainable living are to be learned; Sydney Morning Herald articles, where, as the islandsdisappear, Tuvaluans are transformed into environmental refugees and yetWestern tourists are also urged to turn a voyeuristic eye towards the'disappearing islands'; and interviews with participants in climate changediscourses. I demonstrate that in such discourses Tuvalu's islographs arestructured by a paradox: its islands constituted as separate from and yetembedded in global climate change trajectories; its inhabitants simultaneouslyidentified as subjects of compassion and objects of voyeurism. Such a paradoxis embodied in recurring images of Tuvalu as valuable yet expendable - the'canary in the coalmine' of climate change for Earth. Meanwhile, amongprofessionals in Tuvalu who are engaged in climate change debate -politicians, bureaucrats, community elders, educators, journalists, and pastors- attempts are being made to reclaim Tuvalu as inherently valuable space.Their islographs link Tuvalu to the rest of planet Earth - not in service to it asa litmus test, but connected to and embedded in common rights andresponsibilities of humanity to advance environmental stewardship andcultural diversity.